This San Diego mini mobile mashup has a Ron Burgundy style retro logo. That looks hand drawn to me, almost looks like a colored pencil sketch. I like the logo and the mobile site, it appears to be ad supported via AdMob and they’ve got some mobile community staples like:

• Mobile Search
• Traffic
• Directions
• Stock
• Current Weather Conditions

This site has one other killer feature that you won’t find on most other mobile community sites. Any ideas what that might be? Here’s a hint.

Mobile Surf Reports! Awesome idea. These guys have a mini Surf Report Drill Down, check this out.

Drilling into North San Diego gets you the Oceanside report.

It looks like the surf reports are actually widgets integrated from Surfline.com. I couldn’t see that getting mashed in real time. Same goes for the Traffic Reports, that’s got to be getting mixed in on the server-side in the backend. And though it looks like the Weather stuff is coming across the wire from Microsoft it’s not, I believe that’s the phishing url service check that the browser makes.

Hopefully, someone from sdca.mobi will see that above screenshot and get themselves a favicon file to fix that 404 faux pas.

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URL:
newhair.mobi

Quick Site Description:
A mobile site for finding hairstyles.

First Impression:
What a great idea!

I am actually compiling a list of mobile sites I wish I could find. A hairstyle finder was on my list, but not anymore. If you have any thoughts about what mobile sites you wish you could find, please comment and I’ll add your ideas to my list for when I post about it.

What’s Here:
Photos of hairstyles you can use to show your stylist to get the look you want.

Ease of Use/Find Stuff Factor:
NewHair.mobi works great. The photos are organized exactly how they should be, with Women’s at the top (we’re most likely to use the site), Men’s, Kid’s and Celebrity styles are here too. For fun they have a Bad Hair Day section featuring celebrities and real people with bad haircuts. There is also a Salon Finder and Hair Tips.

The hairstyles are in great categories too by length of hair and whether or not the style is straight or curly. Easy to see what you want because the categories are separated by photos.

Best Part:
The photos – finding the right cut is important and then having the photo with you when you get to the salon is also key. NewHair.mobi combines both.

What’s Missing:
The ability to click on a photo and send it to someone else to get their opinion. This would not only be a great service to customers, it would be a terrific marketing tool for the site too.

Where to Use It:
No where in particular springs to mind, but really anywhere you are with a few minutes to spare and a hair appointment coming up.

Bottom Line:
As long as they keep adding new hairstyle photos to the site I will keep coming back.

Score:
4 out of 5

Site Powered by:
MobiSiteGalore powers the site built by IdeaEarth.

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An interesting study conducted by Jupiter Research suggests that mobile marketing can be greatly benefited by “targeting portable media players with Internet connectivity.”

Although we have long been aware that the wireless Web will generate exciting new opportunities for advertisers across a broad spectrum, Jupiter Research found that “people using mini browsers contribute the most maximum page views, while devices with full browsers have more impressions and click-through rates.”

Inspired by conservative estimates that mobile Internet usage will grow from 16 percent at the end of 2007 to 19 percent at the end of 2008, Jupiter Research sees little reason to doubt that mobile advertising and marketing will continue expanding and thriving in the coming years.

“Mobility is adding a time and space dimension to media and advertising that has the potential to drive up CPM’s significantly,” said Jupiter Research analyst Julie Ask. “We are finding ads with location tags are selling at five to tenfold premium over basic ads.”

To achieve the highest level of success, however, industry experts are quick to acknowledge that in order to capitalize on this obvious potential, mobile carriers should continue to “enable access with affordable portable media players and innovative business models” while being mindful to safeguard  their investment in the value chain by adding information layers to user profiles.

“Carriers should continue to enable consumers by rolling out more devices that look like portable media players at affordable prices - perhaps even as a second device - and continue to break down economic barriers of pricing and application restrictions to consumer adoption,” said Jupiter Research president David Schatsky.

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As usual on a dreary afternoon lunch break from work, I reveled in the guilty pleasure of checking my MySpace to spy on the latest developments in the silly cyber social world of my closest friends and acquaintances.

Per my normal routine, I scanned my top friends looking for new profile updates. Then, I checked my messages, accepted a friend request, and chuckled at the humorous musings posted on my already cluttered wall. Indeed, this MySpace experience was similar to all others except for one glaring difference. This was the first time I visited Myspace away from my PC and on my mobile phone.

The world’s most popular social network has gone mobile with MySpace Mobile, a new site designed specifically for those on the go who are just as hopelessly obsessed with MySpace as I am.

According to the specs, MySpace Mobile features include:

– Message Management - send, read and reply to messages from all of your
MySpace friends, as well as field friend requests.

– Viewing Photo Albums - easily look at MySpace photo albums by choosing
“My Photos” on MySpace Mobile.

– Viewing Friends - look up profiles of your friends and others through
your MySpace profile. Just as on standard MySpace, MySpace Mobile lets
you see profile pictures and other member information via mobile devices.

– Friend Search - search for people by name or e-mail address, as well as
send friend invites and review invites that are pending.

– Comments / Blog Posting - post comments and update blogs just as you
would from a PC. Any new information entered will be posted to a
member’s mobile and online MySpace profile simultaneously.

Overall, Myspace Mobile is an outstanding mobile version of the real thing. It’s easy to use, familiar as ever, and just as comforting as always.

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Novatel Wireless, who makes a broad range of 3G PC cards and embedded modules has partnered with Autonet Mobile to integrate the Novatel Expedite E725 PCI Express mini card into the Autonet Mobile solution.

If you’ve rented a Car from Avis in the San Francisco area then you’re already familiar with Autonet Mobile, they’re the folks that delivered Avis Connect which enabled your rental car to become a wi-fi hot spot for $10.95 a day.

The solution is going to allow multiple users/devices to connect to the Internet from inside the car at 3G speeds. The E725 (datasheet) is capable of operating in the following spaces:

• EV-DO Rev A
• CDMA2000 1X 800
• 1900 Mhz networks

So what’s this all gonna cost? Well, Autonet Mobile hasn’t gone out of their way to demonstrate what their Products and Services cost, I’d challenge you to go find it on their site. You’ll need to dig deep; real deep… in fact, all the way down to this very first Press Release dated Jan 02, 2007. It indicates that the Autonet Mobile device retails for $399 and has a monthly service charge of $49. Whoa, $49 for 3G speeds? That’s 3.1Mbps if you get it. Compare that to your DSL Price/Speed or Cable Price/Speed. I’m getting Verizon FiOS into my house, 20Mb up and 20Mb down for $44.95 per month. $49 just doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

What do you think; would you pay $49 for this? You could be seeing it as an option in the near future on your next new Car purchase, Autonet is targeting the new car automobile industry in addition to OEM after market add-ons.

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If mobile marketers are to believe Deloitte Touche’s annual Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions report, North American mobile phone companies could very well be missing the boat by ignoring the exploding baby boomer market and instead focusing on trendy marketing campaigns and cutting edge gadgets directed at those still in their teens and twenties.

Although it certainly doesn’t warrant a report to tell us what we already know - that mainstream multimedia campaigns are replete with cellphone ads specifically tergeting the youth market wildly enamored of text messaging, mobile web surfing, social networking, and a host of other activities that continue to spike revnue for mobile service providers and manufacturers - it’s remarkably transparent how lopsided the advertising campaigns are in luring and retaining customers.

On the other hand, the “boomer generation” - equipped with highly coveted disposable income - is almost universally ignored by moible marketers.

“Because of the industry’s obsession with marketing to the young,” says Deloitte Touche, “it is missing a huge opportunity for growth. The over-45s already hold a far greater share of the wealth of the world’s most developed nations than the under-45s. Yet despite this the telecommunications industry can appear too focused on serving the youth market. In 2008 this oversight is likely to continue even though it may be damaging to the sector’s bottom line.”

To be fair, when was the last time you saw any mobile marketing ad or a Blackberry commercial that featured a middle aged man or woman? Of course, the matter may not necessarily be as simple as it would seem, according to Lawrence Surtees, vice-president of telecommunications research at IDC Canada. “The youth market is low-hanging fruit. They are early adopters of technology, are easily identifiable and easily targeted in marketing campaigns.”

Marc Choma, spokesman for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association in Ottawa, the mobile phone industry’s trade group, does not disagree. But he says that, “despite the highly visible youth campaigns, seniors are already a major force in the industry. Subscribers aged 55-plus have been our fastest growing sector for some years now. We have been adding 1.5 million new subscribers a year, and in 2006, 48 per cent were aged 55 or older. That compares with just 25 per cent in 2000.”

In the final analysis, for mobile marketing to better cross demographic boundaries in the future, most experts concur that the youth-vs-senior emphasis will have to be replaced by a greater discussion of how both hardware and mobile advertising can appeal to both sectors in ways that are less mutually exclusive.

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According to a joint press release, iLoop Mobile, a leading mobile technology and services company for mobile Internet, advertising, marketing, and content delivery, annnounced it is teaming with OpenMarket, a respected provider of mobile messaging and financial payment processing for direct-to-consumer (D2C) mobile commerce, to “provide companies with a complete solution to create, connect and manage mobile marketing, advertising and content distribution initiatives worldwide.”

The partnerhsip provides both iLoop Mobile and OpenMarket customers an “efficient and cost effective one stop shop integrated solution to launch mobile initiatives easily without the hindrance of managing multiple service and technology providers.”

“iLoop Mobile has chosen OpenMarket as a connectivity provider first and foremost for the reliability and efficiency of their messaging transaction network, along with excellent customer service and responsiveness,” said Matt Harris, CEO of iLoop Mobile. “We also benefit from OpenMarket’s established relationships and extensive knowledge of mobile operators and their billing systems, along with the accelerated time-to-market and SAS70 compliance that our customers require. The detail and accuracy of OpenMarket’s financial transaction and billing reporting is impressive. With their support for a wide range of standard and premium mobile messaging like SMS/MMS, music, games, video, subscriptions, and interactive TV campaigns, OpenMarket offers a robust solution for iLoop Mobile’s connectivity offering.”

The two companies are hoping that the pairing of OpenMarket’s message delivery and financial payment processing services with iLoop Mobile’s award winning content delivery will provide customers with ample resources to facilitate and manage comprehensive mobile initiatives.

“Both OpenMarket and iLoop,” said Steve Shivers, general manager of OpenMarket, “are committed to making more options available to companies seeking to quickly and easily initiate or expand their mobile content offerings and revenue.”

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